The Communications Regulatory Authority (AGCOM), in synergy with the Special Goods and Services Unit of the Financial Police, carried out investigations on two companies operating in the electronic communications sector (the names were not published). The operation, launched following input from some telephone operators, ended with a fine for both and with the blocking of the apps through which the offense was committed.
To put it simply, it was put on one real SMS trading platform. They purchased SMS from random people who reached the renewal of the telephone offer by “returning” to TIM, Vodafone WindTre, Iliad or whoever else hundreds of thousands of SMS included in the fee and never sentand resold them at double the price to companies around the world such as aggregators, resellers, corporate messaging providers, in order to use them for advertising or marketing campaigns.
An SMS was bought for half a cent and resold for a cent of Euro. A plan with 1,000 SMS included, for example, could be worth 5 euros of potential earnings for the user and the same amount to the system set up by the two companies, which would have resold those thousand SMS for 10 euros. From the accounting documentation of the two it emerged that in the three-year period 2020-2022 they had been managed 768 million SMS in the world, 203 million of which in Italy.
The profits are therefore substantial, at the expense of the telephone companies (who expressly prohibit reselling their services) and to the detriment of the users themselves. Yes, because the purchased messages were sent via a specific platform from the device of the user who had sold them, who therefore appeared as the sender, with your phone number. The greatest risk – of which many were probably unaware – was exposing themselves personally to fraudulent or otherwise illicit activities, the lesser risk being blocking the SIM by the manager. AGCOM writes:
The sanctioned subjects, through the platforms they managed, “ordered” the private mobile device to forward SMS with commercial content using the user numbers. These messages, without the corporate references of the legal entities that originated the content, effectively shifted the responsibility for the contents to the owner of the number, all in violation of the relevant regulatory provisions.
The practice, which was illegal not only for the operators but also for the Electronic Communications Code, was perpetrated thanks to a series of apps to be installed on the smartphone via unofficial sites or stores (iOS appears to be excluded, as it still does not allow sideloading) managed by a company from Modena, while the company that acted as a “communications operator” without having any title was a company from Brianza. The names were not published, but the amount was MORE which was triggered following the investigations by the Financial Police: 280 thousand euros.
Per counter the phenomenonAGCOM has adopted an intervention plan which includes: the execution of targeted checks and blocking of applications, the commitment on the part of operators to “keep an eye on the effects of the measures adopted and inform customers of the illicit nature of such practices, as well as the risks associated with adhering to such initiatives”.